Significado de las obras arquitectónicas de Teotihuacan

Incubators can be a key support mechanism for women’s MSEs, offering common space, access to information and technical assistance, access to physical capital and office equipment. They also provide networking opportunities with others starting up businesses. Two incubator programmes will be reviewed as good practice examples, one in Italy called Incubatore Impresedonna, and one in the United States run by ACEnet.

4.3.1 Incubatore Impresedonna

(see bibliography on European Union b; Employment NOW Community Initiative 1998)

Incubatore Impresedonna is part of the Employment NOW programme. It is located in Bologna, Italy and was established in 1992; it is the first incubator in Italy focusing on women’s entrepreneurship. Its purpose is to offer individual support up to and beyond the launch of an enterprise, or the development of an existing business. It is targeted at women in the start-up and development phase of entrepreneurship.

Services provided by the incubator are varied. It houses administrative and service offices, meeting rooms and space for approximately 12 new businesses. Under the first phase of the NOW project, Incubatore Impresedonna offered training and support to 41 entrepreneurs, organized as a common training programme with additional individual support and counselling. In 1997, nearly all of these original clients were still in business, with some having progressed to the growth stage. Twenty of the 41 receive continuing support from the incubator.

Lessons Learned from Crasform:

Sector-specific programmes with clients as the unit of intervention are well suited to supporting women entrepreneurs enter new or male-dominated industries.

Sector-specific training provides the in-depth knowledge often needed when entering new markets. General business training is also important; the two are complementary.

The use of careful market analysis is vital to starting up in a new sector. The needs of customers must be understood so they can be met by the new MSEs.

Structuring the programme to train women in different stages of operation within the new sector is innovative. It creates backward and forward linkages that can support start up for all programme participants and provides established networks within the sector. This is highly replicable.

While the first round of the NOW programme for Incubatore Impresedonna was successful, they adjusted the programme in the second round to make it more tailored to the individual clients. To achieve this, consultants with specific skills in areas such as finance, cash flow and budgeting, marketing, production, costing and pricing were integrated into the programme. Ten women have entered the incubation stage. This includes the development of a detailed operational plan, with this process supported by the incubator. The operational plan lays out:

• the decisions the entrepreneur must make, • deadlines for making decisions,

• the support to be provided by the incubator, and • what staff will assist the entrepreneur.

Staff assistance is plentiful at this point. A consultant helps the client define the contents and schedule of the plan. This person also monitors progress, determines effectiveness of the actions taken, and checks whether any changes are necessary in the original plan. The client also has a personal tutor to help determine the additional support required in terms of training or capacity building. Other specialists provide support as required. Even with all of this assistance, the staff recognizes the importance of the client fully understanding and taking ownership of her operational plan. The operational planning period ends with the launch of the business. The incubation stage usually takes about two years. It involves regular reporting so project staff can monitor progress and ensure that all aspects of the business are being addressed, not just crisis areas.

After four years in operation, the incubator’s individualized approach to MSE support is considered successful. The city authorities of Bologna wish to adopt the methodology used by Incubatore Impresedonna in a mainstream programme to support business creation throughout the region. Incubatore Impresedonna also will expand its operations to men under the name LIBRA.

The outreach of incubator programmes is limited by the intensity of services offered. Therefore, reaching large numbers is not a valid performance criterion for an incubator facility. Since more intensive services are thought to result in greater impacts and tailored programmes have a better ability to meet the needs of clients, the individualized nature of the programme in the second round of NOW funding should be more effective and have greater impact. There is no data from which to judge the programme’s cost efficiency, but the individualized service, cost of consultants and low numbers served lead one to assume it would be an expensive service in terms of cost per client or per business started. Incubators serving a high tech clientele or those needing access to physical capital would be even more costly as they would require investment in the equipment required by clients to start up their businesses. The institutional sustainability of the programme, due to its high cost and low or non-existent revenues from clients, may not be very good. If NOW funding dries up, there is no mention of other forms of support. However, the aim of setting up another programme for men and the city’s willingness to copy the methodology imply that funding is available, or that clients may be able to pay for some of the services received. The individualized treatment and potential for follow-up support increase the chances of sustainability for the MSEs started.

Assessing the gender-awareness of programme design in this case is difficult as details are not available within the programme information. The personalized support has the potential to be gender sensitive in that it is geared to each woman’s needs. However, if those

Lessons Learned from Incubatore Impresedonna:

Incubators offer an intensive, individualized mix of services at start-up and beyond. This style of service delivery makes it a key means to supporting women’s entrepreneurship in new sectors. The effectiveness and impact of services provided should be high due to the intensity of services offered; outreach and scale will be low.

Incubators are costly to operate due to capital, equipment and consultant requirements. Long-term funding or plans to generate income should be lined up before starting an incubator programme. Intensive service levels should be offered with a clear understanding that the client must understand and ‘own’ all aspects of the business development process. Paternalism should be avoided.

providing the support do not recognize women’s needs or are not open to business ideas different from the norm, the services provided may not help women realize their entrepreneurship potential.

Incubators are being developed in developing country contexts, including incubators focusing on women. Therefore, even though they may be costly to provide, the funding and demand exists to support them. They could be a key means to support women’s entrepreneurship in new markets or male-dominated high value sectors by providing the protected start-up environment women may require.

4.3.2 Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet)

(see bibliography on PCG 2000 ; Riggle 1997; Holley 1998; ACEnet Feb 1999)

ACEnet provides an example of a sector-specific incubator, targeted at both women and men. This section will focus only on reviewing ACEnet’s incubator programme. Information about the range of programmes offered by ACEnet is provided in Appendix one, where the agency is presented as a case study.

ACEnet operates in Athens, Ohio in the Appalachian mountains of the United States Its Kitchen Incubator programme is one of a variety of programmes offered with the aim of contributing to a healthy regional economy. The Kitchen Incubator was developed in 1996 to assist specialty food firms to start up and develop, with the purpose of fostering job creation and economic growth in the specialty foods sector in Southeastern Ohio. It is aimed at individuals receiving public assistance, small-scale farmers and home-based food entrepreneurs who are involved in ACEnet’s Food Ventures programme.

New and existing businesses are supported by access to a centralized production and distribution site, processing equipment and marketing assistance at affordable prices. The incubator facility consists of 10 small offices, a conference room, reception area, retail space, computer and resource centre, library, storage, loading docks, and a commercially equipped and licensed kitchen. It was started in response to the high cost of a licensed production facility, which could range between $20-50,000. Microentrepreneurs were kept out of the industry because of this cost barrier. Providing space on a rental basis so that entrepreneurs could try out their ideas before making such an investment appears to be a sound plan.

The Kitchen Incubator is designed so that a number of more established tenants can lease space on an annual basis, providing rental income to the programme, while others at a

start-up stage can lease space on a time-share basis. Many of those renting on a time-share basis are working to take a previously home-based business to the next phase of growth. Access to the incubator facilities allows them to try their growth plans in a low risk way. Those ready to graduate to their own facilities are assisted in this venture.

The business incubation portion of the facility gives access to affordable office space and business support services. These services are offered at below market rates and are open to all area food businesses in the Food Ventures network. Combining retail space close to production is an innovative idea that allows producers to get direct feedback from customers about their products. It makes for a good test market for new product development.

Key elements of success for the Kitchen Incubator are: • its focus on one sector,

• its encouragement of multiple businesses at different stages of growth,

• its assistance in developing networks between businesses to achieve economies of scale (more on this in the case study, Appendix one), and

• the involvement of as many local and regional organizations as possible in the design and implementation of the programme, including training provision and access to capital.

Two examples of the latter are how local banks provide loan funds to food sector borrowers and the design of customized training programmes by vocational schools and regional colleges.

In the first year it was expected that the Kitchen Incubator would lead to the creation or retention of 65 jobs and the start up of 20 firms. By 1997, there were 40 businesses selling products in the retail space and 20 have used the production facilities. Ten women welfare recipients have been assisted in the production of food products for sale, while they receive training (see the STEP programme in Appendix one, case study two). Finally, more than 100 firms have used the library or obtained technical assistance. So, in terms of outreach, approximately 130 clients and firms have been assisted at some level by the incubator facility in the first year of its operation. This is a large number for such a facility. Its outreach potential was increased through the time-share usage of the production facilities and the mixed intensity of services provided.

Effectiveness and impact are harder to evaluate due to a lack of information. The entire operation was developed in response to a constraint voiced by producers in the sector, meaning it meets their needs in a general sense. What is not known is how well the particular services offered meet specific client needs. The fact that a mix of services is offered may improve its potential effectiveness. We only have data on expected outcomes of the first year and so cannot evaluate impact in terms of outcomes. Incubators are generally a long-term support mechanism, so impacts such as survival rates once graduated from the incubator may not be known for some time.

Without information on costs per start-up, or per client, little can be said about cost efficiency. However, financial sustainability is high, with most of the services provided on a fee or rental basis. It is supported by a wide range of public and private funders as well, signalling strong institutional sustainability. The survival of the businesses created cannot yet be commented on, as data is not available. However, the other services provided by ACEnet should improve survival rates (see Appendix one).

Lessons Learned from ACEnet Kitchen Incubator:

Involvement in an incubator during start-up can decrease the entrepreneur’s exposure to risk, particularly in industries where start-up investments are large. To the extent women are more risk averse than men, this may inspire more women to enter into business.

Offering space in incubators to clients at a range of development levels can help generate earned income for the agency (those at a more advanced stage can pay rent for space) and can give clients networking and mentoring opportunities. The networking and mentoring opportunities are greater when the incubator has a sector focus. Since women often have less time to network outside of work hours, this could be a key element for them.

Incubators can help women move home-based businesses into the growth phase by offering access to the production equipment that larger capacity requires. This is an important application in developing countries where many women start work from home.

Overall, the programme does not have a particular gender focus, though many of the clients are women. The incubator’s sector of focus is one within women’s traditional skills, implying that women may be drawn to it. Its intention to move into high value specialty niches means that women could be moved into higher income businesses in an industry where they have knowledge and skill. ACEnet does have one women-specific programme which incorporates the incubator. Through this programme, 10 women on public assistance made use of the facilities. There is no information about any gender sensitive aspects to the design of training or scheduling of service usage (i.e. giving women with dependent care responsibilities priority in time-share scheduling).

As mentioned above, incubators are being established in developing countries, and a model with a sectoral focus could have great potential for supporting women’s entrepreneurship. The idea of supporting women in home-based production to move into the next phase of growth is quite applicable to many developing countries where women perform many of their economic activities within the home. Those who wish to expand could do so more easily and with less risk if the preliminary investment in equipment and support services was available on a rental basis, and in a space providing access to other training and technical assistance, retail contacts and networking opportunities. This would have more limited potential where women are primarily involved in trade-related activities.